17. Committing to possibility: the courage to live boldly in your truth

LISTEN HERE

[Transcript below.]

Is there an internal reality that you know about,

but you haven’t enacted the decisions to make it real on the outside?

Because you know it will change things.

Be it a way of expressing yourself, or your sexuality or your gender or your cognitive style, or identity, or a role in the world, or a belief or cause that you have strong feelings about, or a way or offering something to the world as a vocation, or a family decision or a home decision, or a relationship decision...

Committing to POSSIBILITY - means to commit to something for which you have no experience for yet.

No certainty about how it will go down - in other words, what will happen and how other people will react. How you will react to their reaction.

That lack of evidence means it’s very hard to feel certain about doing it. The doubt and fear become reasons not to act.

So how can you start taking action towards possibility when you don’t have full belief?

When you aren’t sure you can handle what happens, if it will work out, or if you will do it?

By committing.

Commitment is a line in the sand that creates a before and after.

Commitment is created in the heart space of self connection; with the courage to FEEL all the emotional truth of where you are at;

both negative - regret, disappointment, envy… and positive (just as uncomfortable): desire, want, a secret dream.

Allowing yourself the safety in your own body to FEEL it all, means you can no longer hide from your truth.

That radical truth telling creates commitment to being in integrity with your truth, no matter what.

When you establish that depth of self connection, you create a kind of commitment that ignites belief.

Because maintaining that integrity in your actions matters more than the results.

 And your actions grow your belief.

In this eclipse-worthy podcast episode, I encourage you to take time with yourself to create safety in your body to FEEL your own truths.

To do some radical truth-feeling, so that you can commit to your truth in your outer actions, not just your inner self.

Allow all the messy ugly emotions, allow yourself to look at your life with honesty, allow yourself to want what you really want, even if you don’t know the HOW;

This will establish a level of self-connection that you can then draw on as you experience all that it takes to live a life that is true to you, instead of one laced with regret.

You then get to WATCH your life re-shuffle around the truth of who you are becoming:

A life full of the boldness and magic of being true to YOU.

The sensory siblings podcast is hosted by Louisa Shaeri, and beaming to you from the The SOLA System + Siblings, the liberatory framework and unmasking unschool for creative, late identified autistic folks who are seeking another way to see, know and be yourself. This is a radical reimagining of what is possible when we redefine ourselves from within; by unlearning who we are not, making self connection our goal, activating the languages of our sensory oriented perception, and creating the culture shifts to activate futures + selves. It all starts within.

TRANSCRIPT
_____________________

Head over to solasystems.xyz where you can activate your membership in the free + Siblings community, hosted on Discord.

To find out more about The SOLA System + Siblings, the 6 month online 'unmasking unschool', go to solasystems.xyz/siblings

_____________________

TRANSCRIPT:

0:49
Hey, siblings, how are you I've had COVID last week and I more or less back, but you can probably hear I'm still a bit nasally and banged up. And I'm going to record this anyway. So just bear with me. They sound like this. And I wanted to follow on from the last one, which was all about thinking and possibility making decisions. And the impact of doing so the power of doing so right the power of making decisions. Today, I want to talk about committing to possibility. And commitment is another word for decision, right. But I want to kind of talk about those bigger life decisions, the ones that maybe you can't go back on, that are commitments, things you can't reverse, or that it would take a lot of effort, those big leaps, right, those kinds of decisions that maybe we can think about from the lens of them requiring a lot more of us. So maybe they are the ones that accompany periods of deep introspection, deep feeling of processing emotion, maybe deep consideration of the possible impacts. Or maybe these are decisions that come from the precursor having been some kind of event happening, right, some crisis, or hitting rock bottom or a loss or something that reminds us of the brevity of life or the inevitability of death, or anyway, some kind of crisis, something that's alerts you that wakes you up that makes you say, okay, something has to change, I'm done that this is enough, I've had it, now is the time. And you make the kind of decision that has a very strong before and after writes a commitment to to go on to a new path. In the book by brawny were called the Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The first one is, I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life. others expected of me, says those kinds of decisions I want to talk about with this idea of commitment, having the courage to live in integrity, right? Especially someone from a historically marginalised community, or if you've experienced relational trauma, or discouragement, to live in your own truth, right, your own integrity. So these big commitments, these big decisions, being the ones that require courage, and the courage to live a life that is true to yourself to not live an inherited model of who you're supposed to be, or how other people see you, or what agenda they might have for you, or what you mean in their schema and their model of reality. But instead, that who you are being is who you want to be, right? It's true to you that your own models of self and world are clean and clear and feel true in your body. Right? So this goes beyond things being the right decision or making the right decision and into this is my truth, and I need to start living it. Okay, that kind of decision, that kind of commitment. And I've been talking about thinking and possibility. And giving space to that which has maybe not been easily embraced by other people or by you, or hasn't explicitly been invited to exist, or isn't already expressed isn't a material reality yet. But it's in the realm of possibility. Sometimes we know about it, right? There's an internal reality that we know about. But we haven't enacted the decisions to make it real on the outside or make it visible or start living from what we really know. Inside right because We know it will change things, whether it's like a way of expressing yourself, or your sexuality, or your gender, or honouring your cognitive style, or your identity, or role that you want to have in the world, or maybe something that you believe strongly, or maybe a way of offering up something to the world and making that a vocation for you, or maybe there's a family decision or home decision, or relationship decision. So those big decisions, right, committing to that possibility, honouring the truth of something. And committing to something for which you don't fully know the consequences of yet, right, you don't have certainty about how it's gonna go down? What will happen, how other people will react? Can I do this? Can I handle? Can I be the person to make this real? Can I steward this reality into existence? So having a lack of evidence for what will happen? Something being very hard to feel certain around? Right? It's full of doubts and a fear about what might happen. And it's so much more comfortable to defer to delay that to say, to not commit yet right to keep it in the certainty of tomorrow, to allow it to stay in possibility, instead of have to, actually, no go actually move through the work of making it real, right. So I want to give space to those kinds of decisions, those big commitments through the lens of not knowing the outcomes, and not having certainty not having belief in yourself in it working. And yet, so how can you commit and begin to act on it? When you don't have full belief? Okay, so I want this thing, I want to be this version of me, or I want to create this thing in the world. I want to take on this role, I want to initiate this path. But I don't yet fully believe that I will have safety. This dream feels big and weighty, it fills me with fear about whether I can do it, or can I handle it? Will I be okay, okay. So

7:24
often the thing that not having the belief yet, what holds us back is, is not so much what will happen. But it's also the risk that it represents in our own self relationship. And I think this is sometimes what is underneath the fear, right? We're uncertain about whether we will self abandon or self judge, if it doesn't go how we want, if it doesn't go well, or if other people have strong opinions. Right. So today, I really want to talk about coming to a level of safety in our unsafe self relationship, to make those big, bold commitments and to be okay no matter what. Okay? So this is really about getting to a place of courage, courage to try courage to leap courage to step in faith,

8:25
to do something to begin something that you don't have belief that you don't have certainty, by creating safety in yourself to know that no matter what you are on your inside, and that you are not going to disconnect from yourself if certain things happen. So okay, so how do you commit to possibility how do you start? How do you begin? How do you take that leap despite doubts, despite disbelief, despite the no evidence that this is going to work out how you want it to? And the reason that we want to do this right is that when we aren't in belief of the things that are in us, or that we ideas, we have hunches, truths, parts of ourselves when we aren't in belief. We don't act in integrity with those things, right? We start acting out of alignment with who we actually had to be. We start allowing unwanted things, unwanted results, unwanted relationship patterns, or unwanted people unwanted work. Because the things that we do want require that level of courage to step into that unknown. Okay, so courage. Courage, apparently comes from Latin and French and it means of the heart. This is about making decisions from the heart space from a deep connection to self. So courage My ad then is about, I'm making this decision from a place of commitment to my own self connection to my own emotional truth, a radical emotional truth feeling place in myself. And the courage is I don't know how it's gonna go. I only know that I must for myself for my own heart space for my emotional truth. And no matter what happens, I'm going to stay in connection with that emotional truth, right? I'm going to feel my way through it. So how you make big decisions without belief is exactly that is to do it from commitment to own truth, instead of trying to get to certainty or belief that the desired result is possible. Okay, so that's what we're getting into. Are you ready? Alright, so first of all, the belief piece, I just want to touch on it first, the belief that it is essential, right? We don't want to just say, Okay, we don't need belief. No, we do need it. But I want to reposition belief as something that you make a working towards goal. So your belief that this can work out your belief that this is how you get to live, your belief that this is something you can create is something that you don't need from the beginning, you can build it as you go, okay? You can borrow it in the beginning, you can have just the tiniest amount, and you can increase it as you go. You don't need full belief, to commit to a particular path of action to commit to possibility. So often, we try to engineer belief ahead of time, and try and be certain before making a decision. But the deepest certainty that you can create is that self connection to have the courage to do it no matter how you feel. So this is what I want to talk about that shift from thinking and possibility and dreaming, to committing to it. And to offer up a way to commit so how do we get to that commitment, especially when we don't have full belief, and especially when it's something that scares you, okay? So when you commit, this is the line, okay? This is if you take anything from this episode, it's this. When you commit, you create that commitment through an emotional truth telling with yourself, right? When you do that, that is when you can start to generate belief. And you believe, because you commit, right, the the commitment creates the spark of belief. And I would say also, the universe then responds accordingly. There's that famous quote right there boldness, genius, magic power. That Well, I'm going to read it in a minute. It's attributed to Greta, but it might also be W. H. Murray, this seems to be some confusion about who exactly came up with it. Either way, I'm going to read it to you, until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves to all sorts of things occur to help that would have never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events, issues from the decision, raising in one's favour, or manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance, which no one could have dreamed would have come their way, whatever you can do, or dream you can do begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. So I love that quote, because I think it speaks to what happens when you commit, your level of commitment becomes a source of evidence for your brain to start believing more and more.

14:23
You mean business, you're doing scary things, you're making those bold, brave decisions, you're taking those definitive, bold actions, right? It's a clear signal out to the universe that you are acting from that possibility, right? And you are making a commitment to it. And that commitment is evidenced in how you are acting right the actions you're taking those bold decisions, those bold choices. So how do you get to this kind of commitment? So this kind of commitment, we might think of it as a contract or a promise. It's like something that you enact with yourself within self connection. In fact, I would say that it can only happen in self connection. And in even more than that, I would say, it's a methodology for self connection, when you make a commitment that isn't done in self connection, but instead is done in pure thought, or disconnection, or by delegating responsibility for that decision to something outside of you, right, so other people, or feeling certain or a particular strategy or process, what you create instead is force rise over effort is self editing is like self manipulation is imposing control over yourself with your, with your thoughts onto your body. I remember once trying to wanting to solve the conundrum of being an artist and making money. This is way back in the beginning, when I didn't have any opportunities, I wasn't having any shows nothing was happening. I was applying to a bunch of things, and getting nowhere. And I also had lots of money, beliefs like that making money as an artist was unavailable to me. Or that wanting money is bad. That money itself is bad and money equals capitalism. And that being an artist meant being poor, all these kinds of things. And the time I was working freelance in advertising production, I've talked about that before. And I and I, and I knew that it wasn't sustainable, right. And so I had this idea that I was going to become a storyboard artist. And that would be my source of income while I did my artwork as well. And so I made this decision out of force. My thoughts were this has to work, right? This is going to solve it from now to all of time, I no longer have to worry, this is the solution, right? I didn't want to be feeling any uncertainty anymore. And the crucial bit there is I didn't want to feel right with avoiding how I was feeling. I didn't want to feel any uncertainty about how I was going to make it work. This was the path. This is the certainty. This has to work. I have to like it, I have to be good at it. This is going to be it. So I had a few connections. And I offered to do some storyboarding, for free to build up experience. And a director I knew at the time happened to have a music video coming up and they said gone you can come come and storyboard for me on this music video. And it's so just so happened that it was a it was a music video for take that right. And so they got me to do the storyboarding. And I was like, yes, it's working. Take that this is huge. And so I worked all through the night and was trying to figure out how what my drawing style was. I bought these expensive storyboarding pens. And I was like, Yes, this is going to work. This is it. This is going to be my springboard into work forever as a storyboard artists and decisions made and this is this is all working right. And, by the way, my drawings were really bad. I later sold them on eBay when I also had no money. So some take that fan out there has them. But anyway, what happened was in forcing myself into this role into this idea that I had, so I got really ill, right, I got a kidney infection. It came on very quickly. And I'm, I'm I know for sure it was because I was trying to force the solution. I was trying to bend the universe to my design, bend myself to fit this mould that I decided would be the solution to all my money worries forever. So within the space of about two months, I had decided this path forced it got ill and given it up. And it was only when I gave it up that it got better. So commitment is not force, right? It's not the imposition of willpower over self commitment is internal rights and inner integrity with oneself, that I am going to have the courage I'm going to have the heart connection to take these actions that are true to me. And I'm prepared to feel all of the emotions on the way right. I can think back and identify and probably you can as well, maybe three or four times in my whole life when I've done this right when I've had a truth telling emotional talk with myself about life. And I've made a commitment to a possibility I and I can look back at and see it as a clear marker, right? There's a clear before and after evidence in my actions. So you know, you've committed because you start doing things differently. And you start doing things differently because those actions are flowing from the new set of thoughts, and a new level of having felt through emotions that are already present in your body. So your models of reality have come back into alignment. And therefore your actions come back into alignment with your inner truth, right.

20:38
The most recent one for me, is shifting into creating the solar system. What happened was, I was I had had just had my second child. And we, so Okay, let me backtrack. So up until this point, this is 2018. I've been working on being an artist for more than a decade. And the couple of years leading up to that point, I had really started to get somewhere, right. I was feeling good. I got my foot in the art world door. I was having studio visits with several different people on the Art Review, power 100 list. I was starting to show internationally, I'd had several solo exhibitions, I knew I could get funding, I knew how to get funding, I'd had so many successful applications, I've begun to establish a reputation. In other words, the things I've been working on for a decade was starting to happen. They were starting to show through, they were starting to become real. And it was like, Oh, I can this is this is it this I can do it. And I could see the path ahead. And I could see that I could be a successful artist and make this work. And what had been happening was I'd had my head down, right? I've been working hard. And super hyper focused. I was I have hyper focus, I'm going to, I'm going to apply that into this direction, right. And I've been working hard. And I've even told myself that this is my only option. And that thought had been fuel, right? It had been something that helped me focus and make it work. I was like, This is my only option. I can't go and do normal jobs. This is it. Right? This it for me. I have to make this work. And so I had my head down. And then I got to this point. And I looked up, right. And I looked ahead at where I was going and where this might take me and okay, what's the next goal? Right? Where am I going next? I've I've established myself as an artist, what's the what's the goal from here? And specifically, I looked at, and I'm half who creates these performance works. And I looked at the scale of their performances, winning the Golden Globe. And it was like, yep, that's, that's where I've been heading. And I was like, oh, no, I've been going down this path. And this isn't my path, right? This actually doesn't fit this isn't feeling right, this doesn't feel true. How I'd handled that feeling up until that point, was to ignore it. And just go harder, right? This like pushing a button harder, right need to get that feeling of satisfaction and fulfilment. And like this is the right path. And this is happening. And I remember

23:51
the last straw came when I decided not to do any shows for a while I was going to have a second baby. And then I went against that instinct, right? I ignored my emotional truth. And I agreed to do a show in Spain. This is the third one I've done in Spain. It was this incredible opportunity. I loved the positioning the other artists on the same programme. And it was the single solo performance event in this incredible performance space that was brand new, and they had this enormous lighting deck. And up until that point, I've been working with light a lot I'd done shows where I'd booked these huge lighting rigs and like lighting operators and choreograph them with sound and light and dancers and and so it was this really amazing opportunity and it was everything that I had been working on. And not only that, a I love Spanish culture, right? They were a dream to work with. So I was doing it with this four month year old. But yeah, it was this it was this dream opera. In tea, and a dream circumstance, everyone who I was working with would just chip very gently and generously accommodate when I had to pause to go feed baby, or when when they were napping, and they would dim the lights, and they would creep around the office, and everyone was like talking in hushed voices. And so it was basically the perfect circumstances for doing a show with a four month year old baby. And my heart wasn't in it. Besides, I have everything I want. And I don't believe myself anymore. Right? This isn't it. And I didn't want to admit it. So there's nothing wrong with that path. There's nothing wrong with what I was doing. It just wasn't mine. This was no longer what I was supposed to be doing. Some part of me knew, because I'd been titling my shows, there was one that I call technical rehearsal for a lossless body. That final show in Spain, was called dress rehearsal for a lossless body. Right? It was, the idea was that it was a body without material physical performer had these costumes for impossible bodies. And the lighting and the sound was choreographed. And the idea was that this body was being transferred into the body of the audience. But yeah, I call it dress rehearsal. On some level, I knew that I was working up the courage to make a leap, that I was going to change course. And I was just waiting for that last straw. So that show was the last straw. It was like, This is everything I want. And it's not it, and I am not feeling good. And so then, following that show, what happened was I had all of these night feeds, baby was waking up to three times in the night, for 20 minutes, 10 minutes. And it was in those moments, I decided to face the emotions that I hadn't faced up until that point. My emotional truth in that moment, required me to process Regret. Regret is so painful, it was disappointment. It was sadness. It was fear around the things that I was admitting to myself that I deep down wanting to be doing.

27:29
The fear because I had no idea if I could do it, I had no idea. If I could start from scratch. Again, I didn't want to admit, all of what I had been avoiding. I had no idea how I would do it. I had no backup plan, no way that this was going to work. But I knew that there was no escaping it right that I could no longer run away from how I wrote really felt not only the regret and the disappointment, and the feeling that there were these other dreams that I had around styling, and conceiving of autistic status, cognition and embodiment in a way that exalts it, that I had these ideas that I wanted to work with people directly, that I loved self development, and that this would all require me to be more visible to start seeing the different parts of me that I'd been ignoring, that I had been hiding behind this mystique in this role of this artists that I had adopted from the art world that I was in. And that I was going to have to take a different path. And that level of emotional truth telling truth, feeling and processing the depth to which I processed it. And the level at which I admitted what I truly wanted to do. What wasn't working, what wasn't feeling good, meant I could no longer hide from myself, right, I could no longer hide from the assignment, the tasks, the path, the lessons that I was being invited into next. So if I had a decision to make, I can carry on as is which I already knew involved regret. Or I can turn the ship which felt like a big massive cruise ship that would have to slow down turn around, like this big, deliberate, weighty, monstrous, massive, scary, big commitment. So it was in losing night feats that I faced this. And so this is I'm sharing that because I really want to come to the point that it's in the processing of your emotional truth in the safety around those emotions that you create in your own body. Here's where you can then create that commitment to your possibility. Right? That is how you find the courage, the heart connection, to take that bold step to draw the line in the sand to have that shift, right. Ronnie, where's book, the top five regrets. The most important word for me is regret. Right? The regret I felt was so deeply painful to feel. I've been ignoring my true desires, I'd been going down a particular path. That wasn't mine. There was no longer mind. And I was being repositioned. I'd ask for guidance. I'd surrender to okay, this is obviously not it. Show me. Show me universe. What am I here to do? Right? I'm yours. Do what you would with me? What is your highest plan for me? Right, and the answers came. And to be honest, it was bad news is that I don't want this and I fought it. I didn't want to look at the fact that this would mean being visible, right. This would mean showing up in ways that I hadn't wanted to, up until this point, it would mean no longer masking hiding would mean no longer using being an artist, as a way to negotiate space for myself. That I turned into this kind of project of pleasing curators and staying hidden.

31:34
I knew it meant me doing things that would require courage. So for you, if you are in a space where you know that on some level, right, this is an internal truth that you're already aware of, on some level, you just haven't fully felt through. I encourage you to feel through what isn't working, allow yourself to really go to actually I don't want this or this is not working, this is unsustainable, maybe it's burnout. Maybe you're feeling lost, maybe you're feeling fed up, maybe you know that you're living a half lie that you on some level you're pretending to yourself. And it could be a job that you don't like it could be a role, it could be the way that you're showing up, it could be a relationship that's no longer working. It could be a physical circumstance, like where you're living or material circumstance. So admitting how you really feel about your own choices, and owning the fact that these are choices that you made. Owning how you've contributed to this means that you can also own what you will do next. Allowing yourself to process the emotions that are already there under the surface. And having that radical truth telling moment with yourself where you create the safety in yourself that no matter what these feelings are, I'm going to allow myself to feel them. I'm going to stay with myself establishing that level of self connection and truth with what your current circumstances and your real emotional response to them are. You when you've done that, that creates an unwavering commitment to your possibility, right? It means that you can't not go for it. You can't unfill that truth, you can't ignore it after you felt through it. And that means that you cannot commit. Because that commitment is your integrity. That level of truth telling means that you can't, but commit to what you actually deeply desire to create. And when you've done that, it's deeper than what other people might think, or who you've been being what your past says about you. And it becomes that line in the sand of I'm taking that first step. I am prepared to feel through all of what may come right, because you've already established that level of safety to feel. And it means that you don't need to know how you don't need to have belief. You only have need to have that commitment and that moment of integrity with yourself. And then take the first step. That level of ownership then lights a spark of belief, right? Because it leads to you knowing that it's worth pursuing your truth, even if it goes badly, even if it fails, even if things don't work out. Even if it feels really bad. Because just the trying is the integrity. Right? The integrity is not that you get the result the integrity is that you work on becoming the person who who is is staying in line, it who is acting out of alignment that is acting in integrity. My confessions to myself became very detailed, right? This was happening over several weeks, feeling through listening to all the nudges. Try trying to hear the vision of what could be that possibility, and how I really felt. And after that, I started to intentionally do things for visibility, where I started to make bold choices, because those choices were an act of integrity to myself,

35:45
even though they made no sense to our people, or no one who knew me would get on board immediately, right. I also dyed my hair red, so that I'd be more visible. Like you get comfortable with that I started putting myself out there on social media, I started trying new things, I joined programmes, I got a coach, I learned by failing in front of people, I started making new decisions boldly, I threw out the rulebook for how to be, I fully embraced that I had no idea who I was, we started to ignore the art world rules, and I started to invent a way and to share myself in a new way. And then every step taken out of that self commitment, strength and depth, it's like having a direct line to enter you. You no longer need to abandon yourself, there is no longer the risk that you will disconnect from self because you've established that depth of truth telling that depth of self connection. And because you're willing to feel all of the difficult emotions involved, you are also willing to do things that also involve difficult emotions, right? That involve courage, you're willing to stay into heart connection in that heart space. And what that means is that you belong to yourself, you make this intimate commitment in yourself with what you want, and with the universe, with what you are being called into. So I encourage you to take yourself on a date, if any of this resonated create a series of moments where you have a safe and cosy space, to feel feel about things, to allow the messy, ugly truth, to allow yourself to look at who you've been being, to allow yourself to feel what you really feel about your life with honesty, to allow yourself to want and in doing so, you will find the courage to commit to the truth that comes up for you. When you start making those bold decisions from that commitment to yourself, you will watch your life reshuffle accordingly in ways that blow your mind. And if you do want to have the tools, if you do want to have a supportive network, if you want to get coached weekly into making those secret dreams real, you know where to find me. Alright, I'm gonna finish it there. Love to you and talk to you soon. Bye.